“Dude?”
“Yeah?”
“haa … aaaa … aaaaaa …. aaaahCHOOO!!“
“Still ain’t funny, dude.”
“Dam’ straight it ain’t funny, dude. Happy positive antigen test ta you, too!“
“Ya pretty much made sure a that just now, dude. That, an’ happy fever an’ happy cain’t smell nuthin’ an’ happy bummed out. Thanks a pantload. Whut’s in tha fridge?”
” […] um, air?”
“Riiight. I sapose yer gonna tell me there’s bair in tha cupboards, too.”
“Don’ gotta now, do I?”
“Hoookay. Guess I’d better run ta tha markets afore they close ‘r afore they lock me in here wit’ ya. Make sure there’s, like, food in this place, an’ fluids …“
“Like what?“
“Like fluids, dude. Like peeps keep tellin’ ya when yer sick. ‘Drink plenty a fluids …'”
“Wtf, dude? You and all these otha peeps tryin’ ta kill me?!?”
“[…] whut?”
“That’s it, ain’t it, dude? Yer tryin’ ta get rid a me. Afta all these years …!“
“Huh??“
“Dammit, dude, I already got COVID. Yer fixin’ ta make me get tha flu on top a it? Which’d make me sicker an’ more like ta die?!?“
“O .. my ..”
“Well??“
“Beer, dude.”
“What ‘bout beer?”
“Beer is a fluid, one a them thingys ya gotta drink while yer sick ta keep ya alive. An’ if’n ya drink beer an’ ya die anyhow, at least ya die happy.”
“How ’bout bein’ happy wit’out dyin’, ‘r bein’ sick?”
“Ya shoulda thoughta that afore ya did whatevah it wuz ya did ta catch COVID, dude. Ya got sumthin’ that catches stuff that good, mebbe ya wanna adjust it so’s it catches stuff ya want. Like chicks. Not stuff that ya don’t want, like viruses. Ya got me thinkin’, though …”
“Uh oh.”
“Makes me wonder what kinda stuff they drink down at the CDC, yeah? Sumthin’ ta keep ’em smart an’ energetic enuff, an’ wit a positive enuff attitude, ta keep up wit’ all these influenza viruses an’ otha germs, yeah? Some kinda fluego, I reckon.”
“[…] Du-UUUUUUUUUDE!”
“WhaAAAAAaat? You started it. OK, so I’m goin’ ta tha store ta buy [ahem] bottles a beer, ta hang on tha wall an’, when medical peeps tell us we gotta drink stuff, we’ll be ready.”
“Hoo … wait, whut?“
“Huh?”
“Ya take one down an’ pass it around … dude, ya try ta pull that off, these days, ya’ll be singin’ tha wrong song fer sure!“
“Do I wanna know which one ya will be singin’ …?
“Ever’body must get COVID. Dude.”
“Dude.”
The Dudes, with their abject failure of a literary agent, O Ceallaigh (aka OC and The Amoeba), first descended onto the blogosphere from a rented room in Berkeley, California on New Year’s Day in 2006. They’ve moved from California to Maine to Washington to Hawaii to Washington again to Hawaii again (where they’ve finally managed to stay put, for now anyway), picking up a Quilly along the way. They’ve stayed on the blogosphere (on four different sites, two of which have since vanished), while the thing that was the blogosphere in 2006 moved to Facebook to Youtube to Twitter to Instagram to Tiktok. And a lot of, um, stuff has gone down. O Ceallaigh thought it might amuse someone out there to see just what kind of stuff has gone down over the last fifteen years, and how it looked at the time to OC and the Dudes and their gaggle of weird buddies.
